North Korea deploys Photoshop to beat coronavirus

North Korea has Photoshopped face masks onto coronavirus propaganda images, an expert has claimed – while Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un is pictured without one to show he does not fear the disease. 

Multiple photographs depicting North Korea’s response to the threat of COVID-19 were sent to Stuart Gibson, a senior lecturer in forensic science at the University of Kent, for expert analysis. 

Gibson, who has 24 years experience in image processing and has written software to sniff out fake pictures, said he thought all seven images were ‘probably forgeries’. 

In one forged image, two woman are seen working at a factory loom, while a colleague stands at a machine in the background. 

According to Stuart Gibson, a forensic science lecturer, the resolutions on the masks of the two women working in a North Korean factory, are lower than the rest of the image. This he says, suggests they have been copied and pasted 

Dr Gibson said: ‘I’m looking at the face masks and the resolution of them is certainly lower than the resolution of the rest of the image, and that says to me that they have been copied and pasted in. 

‘Particularly if you look at the lady on the right hand side: the top edge of that face mask is very pixelated.  

‘They’ve made some attempt to smooth it in, but you can still see the pixelation there.’ 

He continued: ‘The best bit is that the figure in the background hasn’t got any legs. 

Gibson added: ‘The best bit is that the figure in the background hasn’t got any legs’ (pictured)

‘If they’d just taken the legs down a few more pixels they might have gotten away with it but you can clearly see that there’s a gap there – that figure has been superimposed.’ 

Another photo shows a woman in a white apron working at a machine – but there’s something jarring about the picture.  

‘Here you’ve got the added difficulty that the face is three-dimensional and the mask is wrapped around it, and in some of the forgeries it doesn’t really follow the shape of the face exactly.’  

Pictured: An undated photo of a woman working on a loom with a Photoshopped face mask in North Korea

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Dr Gibson said: ‘With a lot of these images, there’s not a single light source which makes it quite difficult by eye to put a finger on exactly why the lighting is wrong. 

‘But the mind is very good at detecting that something is not quite right.

‘That picture is almost certainly a fake. I think that’s probably due to the fact that the lighting is inconsistent with the rest of the image. 

‘This photograph has been taken with a lot of natural light and maybe the mask has been superimposed from an image that was photographed in different lighting conditions.’  

In some of the images pumped out by the North Korean regime, the lighting and contours of the face make it clear they are forgeries, Gibson said 

While the regime pumps out the Photoshopped images, the Supreme Leader, and Chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea, still refuses to be pictured in one. 

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus in China’s central city of Wuhan in December, the North Korean dictator has been photographed numerous times, often with his underlings sporting the protective face masks. 

The images show Chairman Kim in stark contrast to his officials, setting him apart from the general soldiery with their black face protectors.  

Kim Jong Un and the ruling Kim family are the pinnacle of North Korea’s cult of personality, which has been around for decades in the secretive country. 

Followers of the cult have a fanaticism about Kim Jong Un that is so strong, many see the leader as a god with divine power, which is often played upon by the ruler’s propaganda machine.   

The images of him without protection shows him as a strongman, immune to the deadly consequences of the disease.  

The dictatorship is guided by an ideology of self-reliance called Juche, and recent propaganda has boasted that North Korean factories are producing tens of thousands of masks a day.  

North Korea leader Kim Jong Un is pictured without a mask as military officials don protective gear at a training ground in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) today

In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspects a military drill, unprotected, at an undisclosed location in North Korea on Monday

A photo released by the official North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on 03 March 2020 shows Kim Jong Un (centre), visiting a firepower strike drill, unprotected from the coronavirus, at an undisclosed location in North Korea

At a time when neighbouring South Korea is running short on face masks, the north may be hoping to emphasise the success of its self-reliance, despite having an inadequate supply itself. 

It’s also possible that Pyongyang is trying to make propaganda that was created before the crisis reflect the latest guidance, which bans everyone without a mask from entering public places. 

The regime continues to deny that COVID-19 has any presence within its borders, however unconfirmed reports leaked to the foreign press tell a different story. 

A source in the North’s military told South Korea’s Daily NK newspaper that 180 soldiers had already succumbed to the virus, with most deaths happening near to the closed border with China. 

A further 3,700 soldiers were under quarantine, they added. Meanwhile, a Seoul government official told the Chosun Ilbo newspaper that Kim Jong-un had fled Pyongyang to escape the virus, heading for Wonsan, a coastal resort town. 

The faked photos were discovered after a rumour circulated in neighbouring South Korea that its government had donated face masks to the North, even as its own supply dwindled. 

The rumour was forcefully denied by the government in Seoul.